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At a forum in Russia last week, Mongolia's Culture Minister Nomin Chinbat also requested Moscow's help with identifying and returning artefacts that were sent to Russia for research and restoration purposes one hundred years ago, including artefacts from the Hunnu dynasty 2,000 years ago excavated from the Noyon Uul burial site by Russian explorer Pyotr Kozlov in the 1920s.

Our first trip was to Noyon, a hundred kilometres north of Paris, where Armand’s friend Jérémie, an actor-comedian, was throwing a Bastille Day party.

Noyon had seen its share of luminaries—Charlemagne was crowned co-king of the Franks at its cathedral in 768, Calvin was born there, and through the centuries the town had fallen to Vikings, Habsburgs, and Nazis—but now it was a backwater.

Jérémie, the host of the party in Noyon, killed himself.

“She is now part of my family,” Duchemin Noyon said.